Restoring Democracy's Promise: Voices from the Classroom: Teachers' Perspectives

Teacher's Fight Back Conversation #5 with Jayne Abraham

Timothy C. Tucker — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 08:21:56 GMT

In this interview, Professor Fehn interviews Jayne Abraham, a student from Pleasant Valley High School in Bettendorf as a Senior. This year Ms. Abraham is attending Stanford University.

Teachers Fight Back Conversation #2 - Bruce Fehn & Waverly Zhao

Timothy C. Tucker — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 23:19:10 GMT

This impressive student did a great job explaining the recent results of their far-right board members stifling speech, and adding a far-right organization to Johnston Public Schools.

Nick Covington's Comments at an Iowa Senate Public Hearing

Timothy C. Tucker — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 14:00:46 GMT

Good morning! I hope everyone got to spend time with their families and enjoy the important parts of life yesterday for Thanksgiving.

I'm thankful that I still am allowed to use my voice for political speech. I don’t think anyone should take this right for granted. We all saw how terrifyingly close we almost may have come to losing all of our liberti…

January 6, 2021 and the resignation of Dr. Fairouz Bishara-Rantisi

Timothy C. Tucker — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 22:52:23 GMT

Dr. Fairouz Bishara-Rantisi is in a new administrative position with a different school system. They gladly hired our previous highly qualified administrator. We are losing talented educators because of our own intolerance.

Update 1: The capitol police were overcome by sheer numbers. Some of them were injured or killed. They are also victims and sho…

Interview with Bruce Fehn and Gavin Aronsen

Gavin Aronsen — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 22:49:49 GMT

Teacher's Fight Back 4 — an Interview with Bruce Fehn and Gavin Aronsen

Please enjoy. This had some surprising details for me.

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Gavin Arenson is a journalist and also has a Substack, at Prairie Fell.

Bruce Fehn is an Emeritus Associate Profes…

Nick Covington, Former American History Teacher from Ankeny, IA.

Timothy C. Tucker — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 19:54:04 GMT

We will be starting a new series that is going to be looking at things in Iowa through the view of what teachers are experiencing with the new Reynolds laws in place. Also is there increased divisiveness and acrimony that are intentionally caused by groups such as the Mama Bears, TPUSA, Moms For Liberty, anti-CRT movements, and several others. The divisiveness and anger are what they use to create fear and panic, with the only true end goal being your vote. Nothing else really matters. Your emotions for your vote.

For example, just two years ago before the last board election here in Waukee, the far-right PAC called Wolves and Warriors, or something similar, created a complaint form on their already angry website, encouraging any parent with a grievance to air it out on their complaint forms. There they could collect and read them at the board meetings, or add them to their fake campaign flyers designed to create even more anger and division. None of these claims were ever vetted or manually verified as being true. They were just using this to put pressure on teachers and administrators to enact their version of a White Christian Nationalist based education, which is the true end goal of all of this.

All four of these PAC members ended up losing. Their act wasn’t convincing enough here in Waukee to get elected. But they still succeeded similarly in getting Dr. Bishara fired as principle of NW High School. They weren’t as lucky in Ankeny, and this interview shows just one unhappy result.

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Nick Covington is an Iowa parent who taught high school social studies for ten years. He is also the co-founder of the Human Restoration Project, an Iowa educational non-profit promoting systems-based thinking and grassroots organizing in education.

Bruce Fehn is an Emeritus Associate Professor with the University of Iowa College of Education.